Microsoft has just sent the Windows High-Performance Computing (HPC) Server 2008 to manufacturing. The server is the successor of Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 and represents Microsoft's current solution for high-performance computing.
Windows HPC Server 2008 is targeting businesses with large processing needs, like data warehouses or transaction processing, and it scales from desktop to clusters with thousands of cores. According to Microsoft, the key features of the server are:
- Improve productivity of systems administration and cluster interoperability
- Rapid HPC application development through integration with Visual Studio 2008
- Seamlessly scale from workstation to cluster
Windows HPC Server 2008 is the successor of Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, and is built on Windows Server 2008. The license allows only clustered HPC applications to be run on HPC Server 2008. All computing nodes must be built on x86 64 bit hardware supporting up to 128GB of memory, IA-64 not being supported.
Windows HPC Server 2008 can be evaluated for 180 days. The price will be 475 USD per node according to the press release. More information on pricing and licensing can be found on HPC's How to Buy page. More information on Windows HPC Server 2008 can be found on Microsoft's HPC site, which includes an FAQ page, while information about supercomputers can be found on Top 500 Supercomputers.